UIW arts scholarships to benefit from $1 million donation

The Fine Arts Complex at the University of the Incarnate Word, anchored by a refurbished 1928 concert hall (center), contains the Kelso Art Center (left) and a new music building (right). The complex was renovated with a donation from the Betty Stieren Kelso Foundation, which has now donated $1 million to create an endowed scholarship for fine arts students there.

Photo: Photo by Steve Bennett /Photo by Steve Bennett

The University of the Incarnate Word has received a $1 million gift to create an endowed scholarship for fine arts students from the Betty Stieren Kelso Foundation, which is also the namesake of the school’s Kelso Art Gallery and Kelso Art Center.

The scholarships will support students with “significant academic and artistic talent,” who lack financial resources for professional internships, exhibitions, service-learning and other experiences, UIW said in a news release.

The gift is the largest endowment dedicated to fine arts at the university.

“Through their namesake gallery and the art center, the Kelso family name is interwoven in the fabric of this University,” UIW president Thomas Evans said in a statement. With the latest donation, countless students “will experience and be inspired by the arts,” he said.

Kelso, who received an honorary doctorate from UIW in 2012, died in 2017. A previous gift to UIW supported the renovation of the Kelso Art Center, which includes studios and three galleries.

“The goal of the Scholarship is to assist arts students to graduate with a minimum amount of student debt,” the university said. Recipients “could be named as soon as the Fall of 2020.”

The gift is the second $1 million scholarship endowment the university has received in the past year. A gift from the Impetus Foundation was received in May 2018 to establish the Carlos and Malú Alvarez Endowed Student Scholarship. That donation supported “high-performing and underresourced students with … financial support and mentoring,” UIW said at the time.

Liz Teitz covers several school districts, charter schools and private universities in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. She joined the Express-News in 2018, and previously covered education and news in Southeast Texas for the Beaumont Enterprise.